author
William De Lancey Ellwanger
1854–1913
Best known for writing about Oriental rugs with the eye of a collector and the style of a literary essayist, this Rochester-born author moved easily between poetry, criticism, and connoisseurship. His books mix practical knowledge with a real delight in beautiful objects and language.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Rochester, New York, William De Lancey Ellwanger was educated at Yale, graduating in 1876, and was admitted to the bar in 1878. Although trained as a lawyer, he also built a reputation as a man of letters, publishing both verse and prose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
His books included A Summer Snowflake and Drift of Other Verse and Song (1902), The Oriental Rug (1903), and A Snuff-Box Full of Trees and Some Apocryphal Essays. Of these, The Oriental Rug is the work he is most often remembered for: a lively, informed study of Eastern rugs and carpets that helped establish him as a respected American authority on the subject.
Ellwanger died in 1913. What still makes his writing appealing is its mix of curiosity, elegance, and enthusiasm — whether he was describing a woven pattern, shaping a poem, or turning a small observation into an essay.